North America

The United States is substantially in arrears in its payment of amounts the United Nations General Assembly has assessed against it for the UN regular budget and for UN peacekeeping. The question arises whether there are any legal consequences for a failure to pay such assessments.

The UN Charter contains a single sanction for failure to pay assessed dues. Article 19 provides:

NATO is preparing to interdict deliveries by sea of refined oil bound for Yugoslavia, as a means of ensuring that NATO's bombing of Serbian oil refineries will not be neutralized by the supply of refined oil from other sources. France and Italy have raised a question whether such interdiction at sea would violate international law.

When the Yugoslav government refused to sign the American-drafted peace accord for Kosovo, and after repeated warnings to Yugoslavia, NATO forces have begun an aerial bombing campaign against Yugoslav military targets. The question arises whether international law permits the use of armed force against Yugoslavia under these circumstances.

According to news reports, Robert Mugabe, the head of state of Zimbabwe, was served with process while he was in New York City for the United Nations Millennium Summit, in a suit brought by Zimbabwean nationals seeking civil damages under the U.S. Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA). The suit alleges that Mugabe orchestrated violence by his political party against its opponents, including beating and burning the plaintiffs or, in one case, the husband of a plaintiff, in order to stay in power at the time of Zimbabwe's parliamentary elections in June.

In a long-awaited decision confronting the intersection of federalism and foreign relations, the Supreme Court has struck down a Massachusetts law restricting state purchases from companies doing business in Burma. The Court's June 19 ruling in Crosby v. National Foreign Trade Council was on narrow, non-constitutional grounds. Although the decision puts similar state and local anti-Burma measures at least temporarily on ice, it is unlikely to emerge as the final word on foreign policymaking by state and local actors.

On April 11, 2001 the US and the EU reached an agreement (the "Agreement") in the decade-long dispute over the EU's banana import regime. The Agreement requires the EU to abandon its proposal to institute on July 1 a "first-come-first-served" licensing regulation and to move in 2 stages to a tariff-only system by 2006.